Text Adventure Creator Program - was there one?

Looking for a Dragon or CoCo game not already in the archive - Then request it here and hopefully it will either be uploaded to the archive or another member can upload it to this forum.
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robcfg
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Re: Text Adventure Creator Program - was there one?

Post by robcfg »

Commodore wrote: Mon Nov 23, 2020 11:14 pm
robcfg wrote: Mon Nov 23, 2020 7:23 pm If there’s interest, I can extract files from cas images and detokenise them.
Hi robcfg, many thanks for the offer, but don't worry on my account. The results would be way beyond my ability!
No problem, I just do these things for fun :mrgreen:

Just let me know if I can be of help.

Cheers,
Rob
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Re: Text Adventure Creator Program - was there one?

Post by Commodore »

Thanks robcfg. I am definitely at the level where I need a program to help me to write a text adventure, and even then I have problems!
The Dragon seems to have quite a decent amount of text adventures, which is why I thought maybe it may have something like Graphic Adventure Creator. Choosing out of all my 8 bit systems I would write an adventure for my BBC micro because it has GAC, it has a very nice keyboard, but most of all, it has a lovely display. The text is just perfect for a text adventure.
Alastair
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Re: Text Adventure Creator Program - was there one?

Post by Alastair »

Commodore, there are various books available if you want to read up on how to create adventures in BASIC.

There's Exploring Adventures on the Dragon, PDF download at https://archive.worldofdragon.org/brows ... oads/Books and downloads of the three games at https://archive.worldofdragon.org/brows ... Adventures

Then there are some children's books by Usborne, their website has changed recently and I cannot find the relevant page on the current site, so instead I give you the last Wayback Machine capture https://web.archive.org/web/20201108130 ... ing-books/ Scroll to near the bottom of the page, the Google Drive addresses may still work (I tested a couple and they worked) just remember to remove the web.archive part of the address. As to which books to download see https://solutionarchive.com/list/company%2C388/ for a list of the games, the game pages themselves state which book they appear in. (Also, if a book does not explicitly state that it has a Dragon version but it has a TRS-80 Colour Computer version, the CoCo version should work on the Dragon.)
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robcfg
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Re: Text Adventure Creator Program - was there one?

Post by robcfg »

Commodore wrote: Tue Nov 24, 2020 10:25 am Thanks robcfg. I am definitely at the level where I need a program to help me to write a text adventure, and even then I have problems!
The Dragon seems to have quite a decent amount of text adventures, which is why I thought maybe it may have something like Graphic Adventure Creator. Choosing out of all my 8 bit systems I would write an adventure for my BBC micro because it has GAC, it has a very nice keyboard, but most of all, it has a lovely display. The text is just perfect for a text adventure.
I've taken a look at some adventures and they are either programmed in BASIC or binary files, which could be compiled BASIC, or assembly or may suggest some tool to create them.

Here you have some detokenised adventures in case it's of help to you.

Cheers,
Rob
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Commodore
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Re: Text Adventure Creator Program - was there one?

Post by Commodore »

Thanks robcfg. I had a quick look at the listing for the first adventure, Devil's Island. I was quite surprised at what a relatively short listing that was.
I really only glanced at it, but some of it did make sense.
Maybe, with a bit more study, and maybe some help, I could work it out a bit.
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Re: Text Adventure Creator Program - was there one?

Post by snarkhunter »

… From "Devil's Island":

440 IF OL(J)<>CP THEN 460 :ELSE 450
450 PRINT OJ$(J)
460 NEXT J

… Wow! That really feels like programming from a true master! :mrgreen:
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Re: Text Adventure Creator Program - was there one?

Post by Commodore »

snarkhunter wrote: Fri Nov 27, 2020 7:54 am … From "Devil's Island":

440 IF OL(J)<>CP THEN 460 :ELSE 450
450 PRINT OJ$(J)
460 NEXT J

… Wow! That really feels like programming from a true master! :mrgreen:
Now you see my knowledge of basic is truly terrible, but I'm going to have a stab at working out what this could do:

440 if the variable OL x J does not equal CP then go to line 460, otherwise go to line 450
450 Print String OJ xJ
460 Next J (whatever that does)

So, if I'm right with that, I suppose this could be used for a battle/fight. If the variable OLXJ doesn't equal the strength of another creature, then go to 460, maybe that is you're dead. 450 might be, You defeated the monster.
Is that right?
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Re: Text Adventure Creator Program - was there one?

Post by robcfg »

The thing is, that it is kind of redundant, when you could just write it like this:

Code: Select all

440 IF OL(J)=CP THEN PRINT OJ$(J)
450 NEXT J
That is, if the content of OL(J) equals CP, then print the content of OJ$(J).

No need for the more complicated "if not equal go to 460 else go to 450 and print the value".
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Re: Text Adventure Creator Program - was there one?

Post by snarkhunter »

… It was just that there was useless code there:

440 IF OL(J)<>CP THEN 460 :ELSE 450
450 PRINT OJ$(J)
460 NEXT J

From the moment OL(J)=CP, Line 450 will be executed. No need to make any explicit reference to the following line (450). ELSE is only an optional statement in "IF" instructions.

And I'm really sorry about the nasty comment: I had not understood that this was your attempt. I thought this was from some commercial program you had. I do apologize.

But I will only repeat myself here: I started with my Dragon in the Summer of 1983 with technical knowledge that was close to zero. It's only through attempts, reading and a strong personal motivation that I managed to improve - very quickly.

So anyone with the same kind of will may achieve the same results - and even much better!

There's even another interesting feature of "IF" statements that many people do not know about: It works with litteral values (IF STRING$='GOTCHA!' THEN...) as well as with logical ones (IF A THEN...). In the latter case, from the moment A is "not null", then the instruction following "THEN" will be executed.
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Re: Text Adventure Creator Program - was there one?

Post by Bosco »

IIRC Evan Wright wrote a modern Adventure Game authouring tool for the CoCo which runs on PC and outputs a m/c binary. He gave a presentation at CoCoFest last year or maybe the year before. If I can find the video again I'll post a link.

Edit:
The tool is called Lantern.
http://retroteacher.net/lantern/index.html
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